Letters detail man's thoughts

FORT WORTH (AP) - Before he went on a shooting rampage at a Baptist church, Larry Gene Ashbrook did what many people do when they have something to say. He wrote a letter to the editor.

In fact, he wrote two, both to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The rambling missives sent this summer refer to encounters with the CIA, psychological warfare, assaults by co-workers, being drugged by police and being suspected of murders committed by a Texas serial killer.

At one point, Ashbrook refers to a lack of due process in a purported police investigation of himself - "a serious injustice against me."

In the last several weeks, he contacted an alternative weekly newspaper and visited the Star-Telegram's office to meet with city editor Stephen Kaye.

"There were outlandish things in these letters," Kaye said Thursday. The first letter "rambled. It was hard to follow. It didn't seem very plausible. My immediate reaction was that there was not much we could do for him."

The letters, along with other writings found amid at Ashbrook's home, are being looked at by authorities trying to determine a motive for Ashbrook's deadly shootings Wednesday night.

Ashbrook had boasted as early as three years ago of membership in the Phineas Priests, an anti-Semitic, anti-minority movement, the author of a book on hate groups told the Houston Chronicle in today's editions. If there was such a connection, it's unclear why Ashbrook would target a mostly white, Christian church.

Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., said Ashbrook didn't appear in the center's hate-group files.

"I don't think it's clear at all what motivated Ashbrook," Potok said today. "It seems possible that religious hate obviously played some part of it but whether it's related to the white supremacy movement is unclear."

Three adults and four teen-agers were killed when Ashbrook - shouting anti-Baptist rhetoric - opened fire in Wedgwood Baptist Church during a Christian music concert. Seven others were wounded before he killed himself.

Workers in sterile suits began the gruesome job of cleaning up the church today, removing bloodstained pew cushions and carpet and scrubbing the walls and floors. The church hopes to hold services Sunday.

Ashbrook, armed with two handguns, fired three clips and had stuffed six more in his pockets. He also set off a homemade pipe bomb but it did not harm anyone.

Investigators found bomb-making tools, including files, pipes, fuses and gunpowder, inside Ashbrook's modest wood-frame home Thursday. They also found various writings, like his letters to the Star-Telegram, in which he blamed bosses for his inability to keep jobs and get along with others.

The first letter was dated July 31 - 11 days after his father's death - and spoke of bizarre encounters with strangers that led him to believe he was a suspected serial killer.

Ashbrook, 47, said authorities suspected him of murders committed in the Fort Worth area, including those by Ricky Lee Green, who was executed two years ago for a 1985 sexual-mutilation slaying.

The second letter, dated Aug. 10, was written after he came to believe "it is obvious that you are uninterested in my story."

Sometime after the second letter, Ashbrook visited Kaye at the newspaper's downtown office.

"He was very cordial. He was very apologetic for bothering me," Kaye said. "I kept saying: 'You're not a bother; I just can't do anything for you. These are hard things to do that are in your letter."'

Ashbrook repeated his concerns in an Aug. 19 telephone call to FW Weekly, a Fort Worth alternative newspaper. Ashbrook said he was being targeted by authorities and that he was innocent of any crime, the newspaper said.

"I'm not a serial killer, although, I have always been something of a failure with women," the newspaper, in a story posted on its Web site Thursday, quoted Ashbrook as saying.

"I want someone to tell my story," he told the newspaper. "No one will listen to me; no one will believe me."

In his letters, Ashbrook wrote that he started contacting news organizations about his story in the 1970s, with no results.

"This has the appearance of being a very troubled man who ... sought to quiet whatever demons that bothered him," said Robert Garrity, FBI special agent in charge. "I don't know that we'll ever know the answer to the question of why it happened."

When police went inside Ashbrook's home, they found walls that had been bashed in, apparently with a crowbar and shovel, and chunks of concrete in the toilet.

Against the back of the house were four battered doors that appeared to have been punched and kicked.

The death of Ashbrook's father, who supported the son financially, "may have driven him over the edge," acting police Chief Ralph Mendoza said

Neighbors said Jack Ashbrook, who died July 20 at age 85, often had to install new doors and drywall where his son had put holes. They said the son assaulted his father in the front yard more than once.

"Larry was cussing Mr. Ashbrook and knocked him down," said Phyllis Walls, 42, who grew up on the same street. "The way he did Mr. Ashbrook, you never knew if he was going to run you over with a car."

Wedgwood's senior pastor, Al Meredith, promised to hold regular services this Sunday at the large, red brick church if the police investigation was finished.

"Our heart's desire is that the king of darkness will not prevail over the kingdom of light," Meredith said.

Two of the those killed were students and another was a graduate of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, where hundreds packed an auditorium Thursday to sing and pray.

Mourners filled the balcony and even sat on the floor. During a break for prayer, people kneeled four and five deep at the altar or held hands in small circles. Many wept while singing "Amazing Grace."